Any Motörbike riders here?

AK99

Dominic said:

I've got Rhinehardt exhausts .....they are possibly the loudest of all ....I don't like to be stupidly noisy but I like a bit of rumble
I wrapped the silencers in baffle wrap which I change every 3000 miles . They sound a lot deeper and more rumbly ;overall they are more quiet but not a huge difference .......just deeper and less 'metallic' sounding

D'ye mean the silencers sound deeper with the fresh wrap on it Dominic ?

Haych

I have an Akrapovic exhaust on mine and while it’s not overly loud anyway, I find that installing the baffles makes absolutely no difference to how loud it is. 

I’ve kept them installed since I went to France, apparently we passed through one region where the police are particularly hot on loud exhausts. If the DB killers aren’t installed they’ll confiscate the bike until such time as you can install them. 

If you have a non-factory exhaust without baffles, I was told, the cops would confiscate it and have it crushed!!!

My Akra was a factory option so no issues and the baffles were in so I ought to have been ok. But like I say, it isn’t any quieter with them in. A guy I know reckons most of the silencing is done in the cat on newer bikes. 

Dominic

AK99 said:

Dominic said:

I've got Rhinehardt exhausts .....they are possibly the loudest of all ....I don't like to be stupidly noisy but I like a bit of rumble
I wrapped the silencers in baffle wrap which I change every 3000 miles . They sound a lot deeper and more rumbly ;overall they are more quiet but not a huge difference .......just deeper and less 'metallic' sounding

D'ye mean the silencers sound deeper with the fresh wrap on it Dominic ?

Yes deffo

AK99

Cool. Have to give that a shot before I raid what's left of the slush-fund for shocks and pipes

AK99

p90fool said:

Wrapping the baffles won't do much, and poking a hole up the middle will take away the rasp but make it sound flappy, like a playing card in bicycle spokes.

Some say a picture paints a thousand words. Well in this case it's not the one above, but the mental picture that rascal P90 chap painted even further above, with his playing card / bicycle spokes analogy that did the talking.

Headed for a spin this afternoon to get a proper feel for what the bike sounded like out through the town, backroads and a bit of Motorway - but had to abort after about 10 miles. That playing-card-in-the-spokes thing was exactly what the damn bike sounded like with the baffles in it Awful bloody sound. Couldn't stick it any longer.

Back home, and out the bar-stewards came. (Had to take the silencers off as part of the job as I only got the baffles in there in the first place by sticking them in the freezer for 10 minutes, and heating the end of the silencers with a heat-gun. Proper interference fit. Couldn't get them out any other way - but worth it)

Bit of a failed experiment on the pipes side in all honesty - but on the upside, after reading up on and tinkering with the carb to sort the tickeover with the baffled pipes - I'm more inclined to believe the hesitation and sluggishness I noticed with the open pipes was more down to the carb than anything else. Was reading up on the butterfly carbs of that era, and  everything up to about half throttle seems to be acutely sensitive to the mixture settings and jetting on the low speed running circuit. Small changes there have a big effect. Shall explore further, now that the bike's back in full grizzly mode

Corvus

I put baffles in mine, it was silly loud before. It sounded about the same but less of it, so all OK - where the CB1300 I had did the same thing^^ when the factory baffles went in, horrible 'small' thin sound...

Couple of weeks back I thought it was still loud so thought I'd whip the killers out and maybe try wrapping and/or sticking a cap on the inner end. Turned out they'd been ejected somewhere out on the highway   New pair gone in, locknuts and loctite this time.. 

I put VW baffles in the chop pictured a few pgs back that had short drag pipes - it sounded good and meaty but with a distinct hint of several really angry Beetles : )

AK99

Corvus said:

I put baffles in mine, it was silly loud before. It sounded about the same but less of it, so all OK - where the CB1300 I had did the same thing^^ when the factory baffles went in, horrible 'small' thin sound...

Couple of weeks back I thought it was still loud so thought I'd whip the killers out and maybe try wrapping and/or sticking a cap on the inner end. Turned out they'd been ejected somewhere out on the highway   New pair gone in, locknuts and loctite this time.. 

I put VW baffles in the chop pictured a few pgs back that had short drag pipes - it sounded good and meaty but with a distinct hint of several really angry Beetles : )

I have to confess I dint really understand some of the  thinking on baffles and wrapping at the moment. I used to believe they worked on the basis of being a tube for the main exhaust gas flow, with the holes and wrapping acting as little Helmholz resonators which took a lot of energy out of certain frequencies, without having a major impact in terms of creating extra back-pressure, or reducing the flow. (Or at least that's what I thought back in the day.)

Seems common enough practice among some YouTubers now to do as you describe -  block the main tube and divert all the flow so it is forced to flow through the actual wrapping itself. That sounds as if it would certainly reduce or 'muffle' the sound, but at the cost of an horrendous effect on the flow - a bit like trying to strangle your bike by stuffing a blanket into your tailpipe - no ?

Corvus

I haven't tried both wrap and end cap, it didn't seem like a good way to go. Wrap without cap made no odds that I could notice. With the prev ones adding the end caps (no wrap) did help and I didn't feel any loss of poke. But mine are like 48mm in 50mm or something so there's a bit of a free path anyway. Some point I'll see if I can sleeve it and see what that does.
The other thing I thought about is crimping the end flat but not totally shut. With how cheap the killers are I might have a go with that sometime. Not sure it'd really be any different to capping the end, but..

I had a stripped-down Goldwing thou that I made silencers for, wrapped the central perf tube. As time went on the exhaust note got quite a lot  sharper/more toppy, so I thought maybe as the wrapping compacted or got carboned up it let more top end sound through. Just a guess though. I failed to make a way to replace the wrap so couldn't re-wrap and really see.

Moe_Zambeek

I was given a courtesy bike when my FTR was in for service recently - a Scout Rogue with effectively straight through pipes. Once the initial amusement wore off (about 3 minutes) it was simply embarrassing to ride. Ridiculous noise in town and annoyingly noisy out on the main road; I just couldn’t live with it. People look at you as you pass not because they think it’s cool but because they think you’re a knob. 

To be honest I’ve been all for the loud pipes / slip on can for performance thing in the past but I can see how it’s going to go now. My parents’ farm is now on a popular weekend-ride road for folks heading north from Newcastle and the NE and every Saturday and Sunday in the summer is a constant stream of really annoyingly noisy motorbikes passing down the road. It’s really distracting and will be considerably worse in other spots that are more attractive to bikers and other tourists.

Restrictions will be tightened until we’re completely strangled noisewise…

I suppose my other point would be that for all of the bikes that I have owned and dyno’ed, none of them have had significant measurable gains from sticking on £500-£1000 worth of Akra or whatever. I’d have got more performance benefit from eating fewer pies.

AK99

@Corvus - the change in sound would be down to the wrapping material breaking up - which is pretty much what you'd expect. Interesting to hear you could tell the difference - sounds in line with what Dominic was saying, the wrap gave it a deeper note, which then got sharper as it wore out.

Yeah been thinking about playing around with the length and shape of the baffles. There must be benefit from having them in there in terms of creating some back pressure. And they are dirt cheap. Maybe time to get the hammer and Dremel out again.

Dominic

There is the 'Loud Pipes save lives ' brigade but having been involved with Harleys for 40 plus years I've heard it all .A strangled big twin sounds pathetic but  though I expect some hearty throb and thump from a decent non -original exhaust the silly unbaffled ,crazy loud straight through pipes are just a pain in the arse (and ear ) .
If I'm riding the bike I find it very annoying after a short while and if I'm on a ride-out with club or friends and the bike in front has very loud exhausts I try to reposition after the first stop.
I always find it a ' Prospect ' thing ..trying to impress how bad-arse they can be with loud pipes ........good job they're at the back.

Haych

I don't really 'get' Harleys, or the majority of the people who ride them.  No disrespect to AK99 intended.

I don't think they've actively built their brand on the bad boy image that so many riders seem to court, but I don't think they've done enough to identify themselves with any other image until recently, or shake off the patch wearing brigade that seem to exclusively ride Harley Davidson.

The loud pipes save lives thing seems to be a bigoted mindset by those same people who seem to love HD for being loud and brash, as if it makes it ok for everyone else to be deafened just because they think it's safer, all the while ironically dressing in sleeveless denim and a Snoopy helmet as their only method of PPE!

Harley Davidson also seem to be able to do no right among many.  For years they've rested on their laurels and haven't really innovated or even tried to appeal to a wider demographic and they've been rightly criticised for it.

But then when they do innovate and when they finally wake up to the fact that their customer base is one type of rider, they also get criticised by those same riders because they are not sticking to the true HD heritage!

I watch two vids on YouTube yesterday, both highly critical of HD, the first for the Livewire, which by all accounts is a dud and one which HD should never have started (because it's not an old-tech open piped V-Twin and the guy who made the vid couldn't cope with HD doing anything else), and the other because HD have dared to introduce variable valve timing on their engines!  FFS!

So their existing customer base is going to be alienated if they don't keep doing things they way they have since the end of WWII with excess chrome and loud V-Twins but they aren't going to attract new customers unless they actively seek to innovate and change their image.

The only HD that ever appealed to me is the XR1200 and is probably the most un-Harley like thing they did for ages, and it didn't sell, probably because it was so un-Harley like.

That said, I do think they've knocked one out of the park with the Pan America, that's the first un-Harley thing they've done which seems to have been accepted - or maybe it just does appeal to a different kind of rider and the died in the wool Harley Davidson rider has just ignored it.

Although, starting at a smidge over £17k, it's a big ask when the sector leader starts at a smidge under £15k.

Anyway, on a different topic, for some reason I'm getting pain in my want engine for an S1000RR.  I've never really been into sport bikes, but I don't know if it's the sound of a high revving I4 or the sleek look, but I really fancy one.

JEM

Haych said:

Harley Davidson also seem to be able to do no right among many.  For years they've rested on their laurels and haven't really innovated or even tried to appeal to a wider demographic and they've been rightly criticised for it.

But then when they do innovate and when they finally wake up to the fact that their customer base is one type of rider, they also get criticised by those same riders because they are not sticking to the true HD heritage!

Sounds like a certain guitar brand to me.

For the record, while I've no desire to own either I can certainly see why some would.

Dominic

I've lived Harley since 1982 .....love 'em . I've ridden every bike of every type and ride a sport bike everyday . I still love my Harleys and until you have spent time with one you just wont understand .
I've never taken crack but I'm sure if I gave it a go that I'd be hooked.
What I'm trying to say is that I'm not blinkered .
However I find it very sad the people who 'buy into' the Harley branding thing ........HD is actually listed in the USA as an Apparell manufacturer ( bikes are only 14% of their revenue source ).....you can get an HD Pool Table , Bar-stool , jeans,boots , tent etc etc etc 
There is also a huge difference in the bikes themselves ......an over-chromed £39,000 CVO UltraGlide with a £4k paintjob and matching pannier insert Dorothy bags that does 400 miles a year on sunny sunday Cappuccino meets isn't really my idea of Harley . 

Haych

Dominic said:

I've lived Harley since 1982 .....love 'em . I've ridden every bike of every type and ride a sport bike everyday . I still love my Harleys and until you have spent time with one you just wont understand .
I've never taken crack but I'm sure if I gave it a go that I'd be hooked.
What I'm trying to say is that I'm not blinkered .
However I find it very sad the people who 'buy into' the Harley branding thing ........HD is actually listed in the USA as an Apparell manufacturer ( bikes are only 14% of their revenue source ).....you can get an HD Pool Table , Bar-stool , jeans,boots , tent etc etc etc 
There is also a huge difference in the bikes themselves ......an over-chromed £39,000 CVO UltraGlide with a £4k paintjob and matching pannier insert Dorothy bags that does 400 miles a year on sunny sunday Cappuccino meets isn't really my idea of Harley . 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjB8XXw9y70

AK99

Dominic said:

There is the 'Loud Pipes save lives ' brigade but having been involved with Harleys for 40 plus years I've heard it all .A strangled big twin sounds pathetic but  though I expect some hearty throb and thump from a decent non -original exhaust the silly unbaffled ,crazy loud straight through pipes are just a pain in the arse (and ear ) .
If I'm riding the bike I find it very annoying after a short while and if I'm on a ride-out with club or friends and the bike in front has very loud exhausts I try to reposition after the first stop.
I always find it a ' Prospect ' thing ..trying to impress how bad-arse they can be with loud pipes ........good job they're at the back.

Yes. The novelty does pale after a while. I dunno about the UK - but some of the Harleys you hear in and around the big cities in the US are just utterly ridiculous, it's almost as if there's an amplifying effect on some of the pipes. This part of the world being basically rural, with a bit of a general empathy towards bikes in general with the road-racing, the noise isn't really an issue (yet). Bikes don't even have to get MoT'd, so nobody checks or bothers really.

Worst thing I've been in close contact with is a friend's MV. Posted pics of it before:

 

* That's it in 'stealth mode' - with two of the baffles in. Even with that, anytime we're out for a spin, even when he's behind, I still struggle to hear my own bike over the top of his (and mine isn't exactly quiet either).

Haych

My neighbour used to have an open piped older Yamaha Vulcan - to me it's basically a Harley by any other name.

That was obnoxiously loud, it even said so on his MoT certificates under the advisory section.  

Thankfully he got rid of that when a cheap Indian Roadking came up for sale - that's still quite loud but it seems to have a nice balance of sounding like it should without the fear that your windows might shatter each time he starts it up.

It's most definitely not my kind of thing but it's quite a machine.

Edit: No, wait, the Vulcan isn't Yamaha is it?  It was a Yam something or other bobber type thing with a loud V-Twin in any case

cruxiform

Dominic said:

There is also a huge difference in the bikes themselves ......an over-chromed £39,000 CVO UltraGlide with a £4k paintjob and matching pannier insert Dorothy bags that does 400 miles a year on sunny sunday Cappuccino meets isn't really my idea of Harley . 

It's shifted to the BMW GS now. It's a lifestyle thing, I call it 'Touring by Numbers'. Buy the GS, spec it out and tour the usual spots in Europe staying in the best hotels. Call yourself a motorcycle tourer. A couple of go pro cameras, an insta 360, a drone and you're a Youtube star!  All of this costs money and a £20k bike is only available to those that can afford it. The GS has become the PRS of motorcycling in my opinion. 

It's ironic that a lot of GS riders are influenced by the Long Way Round yet their bikes haven't touched dirt. I'm not saying all GS owners buy them to do that, but there is a trend. BMW Motorrad call the UK 'Fantasy Island' as we're their biggest ADV market, they rub their hands with glee and if you look at some German forums they kinda find it hilarious. A lot of Germans don't even ride a BMW, they prefer Japanese bikes instead. Lots of them love Triumphs and there is a massive scene over there.

Just to add, I love BMW bikes, I've had a few,mainly sports tourers, all brilliant. In fact I have a K1300S coming soon so I'm definitely not anti BMW. I just think that being a 'biker' has shifted from what I was back when I started in the 80's. The 90's were wild for me, I loved the rebellious  'fuck you' nature of being a biker. It's changed a lot now and I think I struggle with that. It's become sensible and acceptable. 

AK99

Yes. With the 'Adventure Bikers' - leading aside the fact you couldn't lift one of the lardy b'strd bikes out of any kind of mud without a crane - It's the full Charlie McBoorgregorWhatisFace £1000 oversuit/empty aluminium panniers ... and worst of all, standing on the pegs going over the speed bumps into Tesco that gets me.

That and the fact that none of the fkrs ever give you a nod or acknowledge you with a lift of the paw when you meet them on the road. (Almost as bad as those Hoggie Cnuts round here )

I dunno - what's the biking world coming to these days..

Corvus

@AK99 I just welded caps onto my db killers, it's not made a load of difference but does seem a tad quieter. Still want less level but keep as much thump as poss. Maybe longer tubes like you say, or concentric ones. No idea.
I've no idea whether the Wing wadding broke down or just filled, became more solid/less fluff-like. Definite change in note though.

HD, there's more of them than anything else around here by far and it's not to do with any bad boy thing. One of the hassles of HD is people's assumptions of why you have one. Not having a pop Haych, just saying.
One real hassle is arseholes in hot hatches trying to impress or compete or some crap. Maybe insecure or something. It's very weird.

There's a few areas I guess, like your city exec rides through Fred Warrs covered in superglue and comes out with every accessory known to man stuck on, tassles and chrome pisspot.
In London you used to get the same thing with all sorts of bike, city guys who'd get the latest Duke or whatever and change it soon as something else newer fancier came out. Same difference.
Folks who want the full-dress shiney accessory-heavy models to potter about on.
Some like the bobber/chop style thing and do mods for that.
Pan & shovel diehards.
Some just want a 'normal' HD like a Dyna or Bob
etc
Every bike type has an image, got to pass that on by and get on with it, do what you want to do.

Innovation has to be within the v-twin format so there's limits I guess. And people mainly want a Harley because of what it is,  not electronic rider aids and whatever. I think the XR had a terrible reliability rep, motor aside. HD do seem to suffer from bean counter interference at stages, maybe that.

Some people will never like it or get why others do, and will miss out on things because of it. Which is just normal and true of lots of types of bike. HDs mostly feel alive,  like old Guzzis and old Brit bikes, Laverdas etc etc. Character basically.